


Somewhere Along the Way

by Emby_M



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: 1907 Bill reminisces, Bill Misunderstands Everything, Guarma, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Past Child Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Post-Gang Breakup, Trauma, Unexpected Emotional Depth for Micah and Bill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 09:14:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17743097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emby_M/pseuds/Emby_M
Summary: What seven years gave him perspective on was that Micah -- for all his quick, easy words -- had just as much trouble saying things he actually meant as Bill did.-Bill traces back the seven years he's been together with Micah.





	Somewhere Along the Way

**Author's Note:**

> Just trust me on this one.

It'd been seven years he'd been with Micah.

Seven fucking years.

If Bill Williamson -- the one who was around in 1898, before Micah joined up with the gang -- knew about it, he'd kill himself right then and there. Bite on the barrel of his gun and blow his brains out.

Micah was like the bastard who killed Georgie. Who disemboweled the man he loved because he had these ideas that Bill -- Marion -- should have never been in his position. Micah was like that man, all taunts, all sharp words and boiling vitriol and the undercurrent that, behind it all, it was just fun. Just a plaything.

Micah said shit to him. Micah taunted him about his discharge, about the way he was put together, the stockiness of his shoulders that never quite hid the flab of his stomach. How Bill was young but growing older each day, how Bill stuttered, how Bill couldn't always say the words he meant to say no matter how perfectly they came out in his head. Micah's words were barbed and electric and lewd.

What seven years gave him perspective on was that Micah -- for all his quick, easy words -- had just as much trouble saying things he actually meant as Bill did.

Wasn't right. Still hurt. But he realizes now that none of the words Micah ever spoke to him were more than forty percent mean. He realizes all the purring, laughed-into comments about his stomach, about his thick thighs, about how _wow Williamson it looks like you're gonna pop out of that shirt soon with those heaving bosoms,_ it was _flirting._

It happened on Guarma. Those months on Guarma, where everyone was sun-fried, baked in the sun like dried fish, Dutch flipping wildly from dull-eyed to crazy. The only person who seemed to be having any fun at all was Micah, who unbuttoned his shirt on the first day and never buttoned it again.

And Bill hated the way his eyes trailed -- trailed to that swath of flesh, was strangely... taken? with the roundness of his belly, the sparseness of hair there?

And Micah goaded him into the jungle. Teased him, taunted him. Micah was dirtily, nastily whispering things -- how, _jeez, Billy, I thought you were smart enough to understand when someone wants your dick_  which meant then exactly what it means now, which was _fuck me._

So they fucked. They fucked hard and raw with only spit as lube and it sucked for both of them but there was something that unwound in Bill that night, the way Micah stumbled away almost drunk-like, scratches on his back from the rough bark of the palm tree, a smile under that stupid mustache.

And then they were -- how did Micah put it, all those years ago? _Courting._  They were courting.

And Micah... became less of a caricature.

It was easy, sometimes, in the gang, to just put people into boxes. Assume you knew them. Assume you could plot out their every reaction.

But Micah was more than just what he was on the outside. The way he would talk about his dad -- about Micah senior. The way his voice would waver when he would try to whack at Jack when the kid was being naughty, when Abigail would yell _You are not hitting my child!_  and Micah would warble back, _My dad hit me and I turned out fine!_

There was the way Micah's hands would grip the bedroll when Bill's hips snapped up against him, the breathless, strangled, delighted sounds he'd make when Bill had damn well made him lose his mind.

There was the way he would curl into Bill's chest at night, a grown man no doubt, for all the lines and hair on his face, but something childish and needing there.

Somewhere along the way Bill understood affection in Micah's touch.

Somewhere along the way he found it was just what he needed.

Somewhere along the way Micah and Bill just shared a tent. No need for a separate one. Bill would curve around Micah's back, pull a blanket over the both of them. Murmur into his nape every night, _I_ _love you_ , Micah never hearing it, never returning it.

Somewhere along the way Micah started calling him Marion, swinging the name like a posy of flowers, the words sweet on his lover's lips in a way it was never sweet on anyone else's -- not even Georgie's.

Somewhere along the way, Micah ran his hands through Bill's beard, listening to Bill unwind the story of that soldier, of finding Georgie split open like a stuffed roast in front of his tent, of going into an animal rage and killing that bastard -- of losing the only purpose he'd ever had. Somewhere along the way Micah had stood, quietly asked _Do you want to stop all this then_ , and Bill found that his answer was _no_.

Somewhere along the way, Bill went as _Marion Bell_ to folks in places they stayed, and Micah would flush red and introduce himself as _Mike Williamson_ , a crazy smile flittering along his lips.

Somewhere along the way, Bill was the only one who shaved Micah. Micah would strip to the waist and Bill would sit in his lap and take the straight blade to his neck, skimming it down his chin and jaw and cheeks. Every time Micah would bark a laugh,  _You could kill me here and now if you wanted_ , and every time Bill would shoot back, _don't tempt me, you fool_. But he never did.

Somewhere along the way, the feeling of Micah was the feeling of safety. He was the feeling of home, even as it all fell apart, as they watched Dutch warp and change under the weight of loss, the weight of a love that was too strong.

 _Thank God that ain't us,_ Micah had said, and it stung, because maybe it was him.

Seven years out, Micah and him knew the gang was coming to an end. The intervals of running and being found were closing in shorter and shorter. They were more and more northerly- They'd come into Canada soon, if they weren't already there.

Micah and him had a spat the day Bill took off. They planned it -- split off. Wasn't Dutch's gang no more. It was Micah and Bill's.

They'd argued about that. Who was first, Micah or Bill. Bill or Micah. _Mike and Marion_ , Micah had sing-songed, _Sounds like a wedding card._

Micah and Bill's, though, they'd decided. _You're on top all the other times,_ Micah'd laughed, twisting his fingers into the ever-graying hair at Bill's temple.

Bill would take off first. Micah would ditch Dutch later -- had something to do first, see.

Never told him what that last thing was.

Bill went off. Not before they had a spat.

They fought. Micah had always been cagey, secretive. Micah knew something he didn't. Never shared, not even when he would share the memories of his grandfather, the feeling of gnarled old outlaw's hands on his neck, the brutality of a man with no code but destruction.

Micah told him nothing, and they fought about it -- Bill had finished packing and demanded to know when Micah'd join him further south, when they would start that life together. Micah said nothing clear, nothing direct, just said _Faith, faith, Billy. I'll come for you, my waiting princess._

The last words he spoke to Micah were _Yeah, up yours too, asshole._

Micah's last words to him were _I'm eagerly awaiting it._

Micah had always changed his thinking.

In the gang, after the army, after years of subordination, it was easy to believe any slip-up he made was his fault and his fault only. You took and took and took the beatings because those were your superiors, and they had earned that. But once you got up there, it was your turn.

He remembers the kid, Kieran. That taunting, bullying tone he would take. How the kid would go wide-eyed and tremble, how Hosea came to him later and said _what are you trying to do to that boy, he's harmless as a mouse_ but Hosea didn't get it, because people had been showing him respect from the day he was born, all silver spoons and a life plotted ahead of him.

Kieran was his power trip, the first one. The only one he could punch down at.

 _It's good to feel powerful_ , Micah had said, when they'd stolen and killed just for the hell of it, when they were wanton and didn't care about being wanted. They had fucked, still covered in blood, and Bill felt powerful when he yanked Micah's hair so hard while rutting into him deep that Micah's voice had cut out entirely, and he felt powerful when Micah had demanded they go again, smearing the blood on one another and feeling, finally, just as dirty as his soul had always been.

Micah turned it all into a _them_  problem. _The world has done you wrong, Billy, time to take it all back_.

Bill leaves by his lonesome.

When Micah doesn't show up after a week, fine. When Micah doesn't show up after two, fear. When Micah doesn't show up after three -- rage.

Micah had definitely left him. Run off on his own, made a deal with Dutch to get rid of Bill once and for all. Micah had been itchy, tetchy those last days -- distant, even; it was all just a way of breaking up with him, of ending that thing they had for years. Micah was stringing him along, pretending. It was easy to believe.

They made one more fool out of Bill Williamson.

Bill rounded up outlaws on his own. No code, no creed. You live by the gang, die by the gang. Snakes get eaten. No attachments.

Bill rounded up so many outlaws. Let them all loose. Did it so that the pain of being abandoned was overtaken by blood and debauchery. Blood and violence and raw, animal lust.

The name Marion was forgotten to time. He ripped up his discharge papers along with a letter Micah had written to him, one that arrived too late, one that he never opened. He knew what it said -- _It was a lie, it was a joke, have fun with your new life, you'll never find the two of us. All I had ever said and done, the smiles I smiled at you, they were fake. Just something to lull you into a false sense of security._

Five weeks and Bill gets the newspaper.

The newspaper, with a tiny article, below the fold - "Local Outlaw killed by Pinkerton Detective Agency."

_Micah Bell was killed following a shoot-out with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. The third in his line to do so._

Bill rips that up too, throws it in the fire, and drinks to forget.

 

* * *

 

_Marion,_

_I'm joining you soon._

_If I seemed at all twitchy when you left -- wasn't because I didn't believe in you. I do, still. Just had some business to fulfill._

_I never told you all this. I never wanted to -- knew you were just as wanted as Dutch. If you'd been here when I finally get that reward off him, I'd get a reward off you too. What a bounty I'd get, I could live like a king!_

_One hell of a lonely king._

_I'm collaborating with them Pinkertons. Have been all the way back since Blackwater. This is my last job, I swear -- we'll take the money I get off Dutch and go somewhere quiet and lawless. Always thought you might be good picking for a woodsman -- how about Oregon?_

_I'm missing you now, can't sleep right without your big buxom bosoms pressing up against my neck. Can't rightly shave myself right. Find myself missing the way you whisper you love me into my neck every night (you really are dumb if you thought I was asleep every time you said it.) Find myself missing your rambling stories (get to the point, old man!)_

_When I see you again, I need you in me. I need you to fuck me hard against every available surface. I'll grab wads of cash and throw them in the air and we'll fuck on a pile of money, alright? Like that burglary, but no blood (unless you want blood. We could do blood, too.) I need you to bite big bruises into my shoulders, growl to me that I'm yours (and God, am I yours, honey) and take me until you're coming inside me, filling me up. And then I need you to apologize and kiss each one like you always do, you big sap, clean me up so sweet and gentle. I need you. I want you._

_I'm joining you soon. Promise._

_I love you too,_

_Your Mike._

**Author's Note:**

> This is a surprisingly uncommon pairing. I hope at least one of you has been hoping for this.  
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


End file.
